Colorado-San Diego Quotes
Colorado Head Coach Tad Boyle
Opening Statement
“Yeah, it was a, you know, a workman like win, if you will. Maybe in some respects and ugly win. But when you win by 18 at home and you got a little bit of a sense of disappointment or we didn't play as well as we're capable of playing, I think that's a sign of progress to some degree. But that's kind of where we're at because we know we have to be better than we were tonight to be the kind of team we want to be this year and turnovers are a good example of that. Free throw shooting is a good example that. Little things that separate programs that are great or elite and programs that are good and solid, and right now, I think we're good and solid, but we're certainly not elite, and we're not where we want to be, but you know, we'll take the win against a good San Diego team whose beaten us two years in a row. They got great toughness and I got a lot of respect for their coach and their program and so we'll take it and we'll move on and we have to move on quickly because I'll talk about it a little later but the game Monday night is going to be a battle.”
On The Difference In The Second Half
“Well, number one, we kept getting stops and our defensive intensity didn't come and go in the second half, we kept getting stops and we allow that to get us in transition. We got to the foul line, we attacked the basket in transition. I think we got to the one on one with 14 minutes to go in half. One of the offensive keys for Colorado tonight was we got to play inside. We got to attack the rim whether it's through our bigs or whether it's driving the ball and understand that you may not get all the way to the rim because San Diego is a good defensive team. They're going to take charges like they did, they're going to be in the gaps like they were, but driving it and making that extra pass is how we're going to have to play and we did that more in the second half than the first half. I thought in the first half our motion offense was atrocious. We stood around, we didn't cut, we didn't move the ball. We switched to a kind of a ball screen continuity offense with about four minutes to go in the first half and we stuck with it the second half. We knew they're going to press after free throws. We wanted to attack their press. We didn't attack their press in the first half, we turned it over against their press. You can't do that, you got to make teams pay for pressing you in your own building. We didn't do that the first half. The second half we did a better job of that. The play I remember was we kicked it ahead to Eli and he drove it and bounce passed it to Tyler and Tyler got it in the lane and kicked it to McKinley and McKinley swung it to Lucas for a wide open three and that's how you got to play against that press, you got to move the ball and share the ball. We did a better job of that in the second half and the numbers obviously show that.”
On The Depth Of This Team and Lucas Siewert’s Performance Off The Bench
“Yeah and it doesn't matter if you're starting or coming off the bench. It really doesn't. What I want our players to understand is this team has a lot of weapons. It's going to be different guys every night. Know who you are and what you do well. Don't try to do things you can't do. Lucas is a good example, I thought he really played within himself tonight and he didn't force the issue. He had a turnover there late that was silly. We got to get rid of those. But yeah, know who you are. I told our players look, it's really simple in terms of what I expect from every player on our team. I don’t care if you’re starting or if you’re coming off the bench. It makes no difference to me. But defensively, you got to play your tail off and rebound the basketball on defense. Offensively, take care of the ball and take great shots. It’s as simple as that. If we have every Buff do those two things on each side of the ball, this can be a great year but when we start worrying about getting our shots or forcing shots up. We can’t think like that. We have to think about making each other better and when we do that, we’re pretty good.”
On The 18-0 Run In The Second Half
“Well, I thought it was a combination of things. I thought number one, San Diego expended a lot of energy in that first half. We had the pace of the game going the way we wanted it to go. We weren't playing like we wanted to play, we were turning it over, we weren't making shots, we were taking some tough shots but the pace of the game was good because our, again, one of the offensive keys was get the ball inside, the second offensive key was get the game in transition and the only way you get the game in transition is get stops on defense so you can allow yourself to run and attack the basket because we got a lot of athletes on this team. We've got a lot of depth and quality depth and I think we got to wear teams down, especially in this building at home. So, I think that run was a combination of San Diego maybe being a little tired, they played seven and a half guys against Weber State the other night. They played nine tonight for sure and they had some guys playing that weren’t on the scouting report. I thought our intensity picked up defensively for the most part.”
On Tyler Bey’s Three Point Shooting
“Look, I talked to Tyler about that after the Arizona State game and the one thing I told Tyler is you cannot hunt your threes. Your threes are going to come, they're going to come out of the flow. And that tonight, his threes came out of the flow and he made two or three and obviously we’ll take that every night, you know. So, don't hunt them and I see numbers in practice. I've seen how he shot the ball from three in practice. First 30 practices or so that we've had his numbers are pretty good. He's shooting 41% from three in practice, but again, don't hunt them. Let them come and know that your strength is at the rim rolling, finishing at the rim, getting to the free throw line. But the threes will come you don't have to hunt them and I thought he did a really good job of that tonight.”
On D’Shawn Schwartz Play
“Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if he wasn't mentally ready. He wasn't himself in that first half. I thought you know, you mentioned the first two games is a small sample size. I look at our turnovers. I look at our free throw shooting offensively has to get better, to a man as a team. But I thought D’Shawn kind of got himself out of that funk and that's what you have to do, you have to play yourself out of the funk, as a coach, sometimes you can only control so much. I control who plays and how much they play. Mike Rohn does a great job on the bench. He's got probably got the most difficult job of anybody. He's kind of in charge of substitutions and sometimes I can throw him off by putting guys in and vetoing and I've got to be careful not to do that too much because he does a great job. I got a lot of trust and in him and players better know that they better be on coach Rohn’s good side.”
On Daylen Kountz’s Early Struggles
“He's got to get himself out of it. You know, again, my thing with Daylen and I'm gonna talk with him tomorrow, but it's just what I just talked about, defend and rebound, take care of the ball, take great shots. It’s as simple as that. If you do those things Daylen, you're going to be fine. When you try to do too much and you try to force the issue, good things don't happen. Just play the game the way you're capable of playing the game. That's the mental part the players have to kind of get through and he's gonna have to get through it. But I got confidence in Daylen, Daylen’s a good player. I know that. I got confidence in all our guys. I got a lot of confidence in Alex Strating. I have a lot of confidence in Frank Ryder. I really do. So, if I got confidence in them and they're not in the rotation and not playing. You know, I got confidence in Daylen Kountz, Eli Parquet, Maddox Daniels, and Shane Gatling and the whole crew. So, it's gonna be a different guy every night and some nights when you're not playing well, you're not gonna play as much. You got to understand that and accept that. If you can't, we’re going to have issues. But that's going to be a common theme with this team as the year goes on.
On The Quick Turnaround With A Game On Monday
“Quick turnaround. I'm telling you guys, the game Monday night is going to be a battle extraordinaire. We are playing a well-coached, well disciplined, tough team that last year won 31 games, won an NCAA Tournament game, they've got three starters back off that team. One of their best players comes off the bench, he doesn't even start. We've got our hands full on Monday night. Our fans need to understand and our players, I promise you our players will because we talked about it after the game and we're going to talk about it tomorrow in practice we had better be ready to battle on Monday night because it is going to be a knockdown drag out, I promise you and we got to be ready to go. We have to play two halves of basketball, which we haven't done at Arizona State in Shanghai, we didn't do it tonight. We got to put two halves together and play with great toughness on Monday because it's gonna be a battle.”
Colorado Players
Tyler Bey, Jr., F
On Relying on defense“We live by defense, period. We didn't have it in the first half, and we picked it up in the second. We were just going back and forth and that’s something coach emphasizes on: getting stops and when we don’t get shots we need to get stops.”
On confidence with shooting
“This is just me staying in the gym. I know a lot of us are going to the gym as much as we can. Especially this guy right here. We’ve just been in the gym and it's making us confident in the shot.”
On differences in shooting this season
“Even if we don't make shots, we gotta get back on defense and play for 30 seconds. That's been our main goal which is getting stops every time, whether we’re making them or not.”
On changing the course of the game
“We just dug deep in halftime and figured it out. Honestly, I think that we just played as a team, helped each other on the back cuts and we were just there for each other the second half.
D’Shawn Schwartz, Jr., G
On Halftime adjustments“I think the nerves kind of calmed down a little bit. It was a packed out house. It's great, love to see. We just had to slow down a little bit and get our heads on us.”
On quick turnaround for Monday
“We just need to make sure we recover well, cold tub, hot tub. I want to make sure that we're not just lying around and not doing anything, make sure we stay in the gym and stay focused, stay tight, this is a good team. There really isn’t an excuse. We just gotta go and play.”
Lucas Siewert, Sr., F
On future games“I mean, as long as we keep playing defense we’ll give ourselves a chance every game, and then combine that with rebounding, making shots, it’s a good thing for us.”
On accepting his role
“You just gotta accept your role. I think just being on the bench for the first four minutes helps a little bit to see what they’re doing. I am just making the time count.”
San Diego head coach Sam Scholl
On how depth of his bench was a factor
“When we have as many guys playing as many minutes they are, actually nine guys tonight, I think it plays a little bit of a factor. But we have to be tough through that and play through the fatigue along with being mentally tough so we can focus through that to be able to continue to make plays. I look around at other teams playing and I see a lot of guys in the country playing 45 minutes, 43 minutes, 42 minutes in games. Some of those are closer to 45 minutes when they go into overtime so we are certainly capable of doing so and playing a lot of minutes.”
On what made the difference between the first and second half
“I think that they just finished plays in the paint, they finished and scored in the paint while we didn’t. We missed lay ups, had shots blocked and they were coming down on the other end and were finishing. They also have really good players, they have really good players that can score in a lot of ways. I think that they just really controlled the paint and that is where they had a big advantage.”
On the second half
“I thought it was officiated well and that they are extremely talented. They played together for a long time and once they were able to settle down they were able to really attack us off the dribble with their shooters. I am disappointed that we gave up 10 threes, which is way too many. Their guys just made shots.”
On playing in Boulder and what this loss means -
“You obviously never want to lose but it is something that we can hopefully learn a lot from. They are a top 25 team that is well coached so we are going to use this as one step that we take every day to get better. In our conference we are probably going to have three top 25 teams: Gonzaga, St. Mary’s and BYU that we will have to play six times. So this was a great chance to play a top 25 team on their own floor, something we will do in November as well. So we will face similar caliber teams this season.”